1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator, and more particularly, to a method of automatically identifying goods stored in its storage chamber to search stored positions of the identified goods.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-81848 discloses a method of identifying information, such as names, kinds, and stored positions, of goods stored in a storage chamber of a refrigerator. According to the method disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-81848, goods stored in the storage chamber of the refrigerator are easily identified, and the stored positions of the goods are also searched. To this end, additional antennas are mounted in storage cells of the storage chamber, respectively, such that the stored positions of the goods are searched by the respective antennas.
In the conventional refrigerator disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-81848, at least two antennas are mounted in each of the storage cells of the storage chamber such that not only goods stored in the storage chamber are identified but also the stored positions of the goods are searched. Specifically, one antenna is mounted to each divider, by which the storage cells are divided from each other, and the other antenna is mounted to any one side of each storage cell for searching the stored positions of the goods. In other words, the at least one antennas are necessary for each storage cell as described above. Consequently, when the number of the divided storage cells is 4 as in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-81848, at least eight antennas are necessary.
As the number of antennas increases, the number of wires used to electrically connect the antennas to each other also increases, and installation spaces for the antennas also increase. As a result, the size of the refrigerator needs to be increased, or the capacity of the storage chamber decreases. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider the installation spaces for the antennas when the design of the refrigerator is changed. Consequently, the change in design of the refrigerator is complicated, which increases the manufacturing costs of the refrigerator.